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You probably wouldn’t complain about your school as much as if you were born in one of the 11 least educated countries in the world. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even go to school, statistically speaking. This is even more true for women. Traditionally, in these countries women are still discriminated on many levels, education being one of the most visible and most damaging in the long run. Unfortunately, this problem isn’t limited to just least educated countries in the world.

We saw which the 14 most educated countries in the world are in our previous list. These are highly developed countries, with the high standard of living and easily accessible educational institutions. They were ranked by the percentage of the people who finished tertiary education. Countries on our list, however, are quite the opposite. Some of them have been ravaged by wars, some had troubles adapting to post-colonial period and some endured prolonged periods of corrupt politician’s rule that didn’t care about the education. That is why we ranked them according to the most basic criterion, literacy rate. Having a literacy rate far below the world average, which is 84.1%, is a sure sign that the education system is subpar and that it needs immediate attention. Unfortunately, there are several factors that can hamper this much-needed reforms. Lack of funding is usually number one reason why some countries can’t improve their school. Lack of teachers is another, equally crippling. Given time and resources, every one of countries on our list can make definitive improvements. Some of them do, and the results are showing, but education isn’t something that can be fixed overnight.

For some countries, like Afghanistan, there are more pressing issues, like establishing peace. Until that, there isn’t much hope that education will improve in any significant measure. Let’s find out which are 11 least educated countries in the world.